Andy's Glasses

I generally like Australians. They’re good people. Upbeat. Happy. Bright. Fun. Optimistic. There are always exceptions; you can’t like an entire nation, but for every revolting Mel Gibson, there’s always a Kylie to redress the balance. For every Kerry Packer there’s an Olivia Newton John. For every Shane Warne, a limp Jason Donovan.

But when it comes to cricket its no longer about ‘nice’. No longer about decent even. You just take an average Aussie, give him some facial hair and he turns into a wrecking ball. Mitchell Johnson, the latest incarnation of Aussie pace bowler to beat the merry shit out of our fine upstanding English boys with no mercy. He follows a long line from Lilly and Thompson, Merv Hughes, a host of moustachioed marauders intent on the destruction of our cricketing hopes.

And you have to wonder what makes such a small population so excellent at certain sports. Ok, they don’t play football for shit because they lack the subtlety and skill-set that such a game requires, preferring as they do cricket (at very high speed), the brutality of rugby and the abrasive rough-houses of rugby league and Aussie-no–rules football.

The main reason for such sporting excellence is that Australians don’t generally work very much, and when they do its not so hard that they can’t find 6 hours a day to surf, run, drink excessively and fart a lot. And then there’s education. Most Australians can’t read and write very well, don’t do numbers at all and find history a bit ‘old’. So they’re sent out of the classrooms into the 40 degree temperatures to run around and dehydrate instead. Sent to the Outback with Jenny Agutter (if only) on ‘walkabout’.

Yet the main reason, the thing that gives Aussies that ‘competitive edge’ is the hazardous nature of life down-under. A good day in that part of the world is one when you don’t get attacked by a shark in the car park at Tescos. When you’re not bitten by the world’s most venomous snakes, which outnumber the nice animals by 7 to 1. They have spiders that can kill you with a look, a jellyfish so toxic that to swim within half a mile of it will result in scratching your testicles for 6 weeks thereafter. Any closer and you’re dead. Even the butterflies carry Uzis out there. You’re safer in a Tennessee schoolyard than out in the Aussie countryside.

So next time (heaven forbid) the Aussies knock us to hell in a test match, don’t hate them. They can’t help it. Pity them. They grew up with great adversity thousands of miles from civilisation, then grew facial hair. And that’s just the women.

Happy rather late Tuesday

A xxxx

Every now and again I need an ‘old git’ moment. You know: ‘why is the world so different’, ‘nostalgia was so much better back in the old days’, ‘who needs more than three tv channels anyway?’, I prefer to watch football in black and white cos that’s when Spurs win’.

Dating. Courting. Going out. Pulling. Boyfriend. Girlfriend. Ladyboyfriend. It was all so simple, so easy, so… just so ‘there’. You saw someone, you liked what you saw, you approached, you ‘chatted up’, you got blown clean out the fucking skies and never spoke to another opposing gender person for the 4 years of intense psycho-therapy it took to rebuild your self-confidence.

What was so hard about that?

Ok, there was a degree of crashing and burning, some minor humility in rejection (not that I’D know about that) but generally it only happened in a drinking environment anyway, so all forgotten by the time you offer to buy the next babe a babycham. And as soon as she said: ‘nah, I’d rarver ‘ave a pint’a bitter, fanx’ (I grew up in the East End; we didn’t need bottles of Bolinger and Michelin stars) then she was ‘my new girlfriend’. There was no pause, no delay, no months of agonising over status. She was ‘mine’. For better or worse. Generally worse, but not normally for very long anyway, so who cared?

But it was rewarding when you weren’t rejected. It felt fantastic. It was exciting. And it was fun.

The other day I read an article about two guys who are starting something ‘new and imaginative’. They’re going up to girls in the street and actually asking them out for a drink. Like in words. Face to face. No texts, emails, instagramming, snapchat or tinder. I mean; how fucking inventive is that???? What will they think of next?

Love at first sight has been replaced by ‘like’ at first view online. Dating, like so much in contemporary life, is done online, via screens. ‘Check out the tits on that’ has been replaced by ‘look at this app’. Its awful. Where’s the frisson? The charge? The giant step into uncharted territory?

Its all become too calculated, too organised, too clinical. Before you actually have a conversation with anyone you know their entire history, their cv, prospects, lifestyle, dating and sexual experiences and their favourite coffee shop. Even though it could all be made up and there’s some 90 year-old pervert on the other end of the photo of Harry Styles. Or of Taylor Swift.

So get out there. Be brave. Be bold. Be reckless. Rejection only hurts every time and in a massive, soul-destroying way. How bad can it be?

Happy chatty sunday

A xxxx

I’m interested in the election of Tim Farron (who?) as the new leader of the Lib-dems. Very interested. He was voted on Thursday, it was in the papers yesterday. By this morning it has been relegated to the ‘un-newsworthy’. No longer of interest. They’re talking about Pluto, they’re talking about cricketing catastrophes, they’re talking about how to make killer kale with beans and fucking quinoa, but nothing about the Libs. Its as if they’re just some 4th rate, virtually unrepresented, hopeless group of almost-political no-hopers or somefink.

But the election was fascinating (zzzzz). There was Tim Farron and… er… someone called Lamb. And Tim Farron won. Wow. Brilliant. Nick Clegg resigned as leader and there were only 5 other MPs who could have stood. So Tim’s vote alone represented 12.5% of the political party vote. If you can name 3 out of those 5 other mps you win a chance to sit for the Esher by-election as Lib-Dem candidate.

Ok, there’s that geezer with the cardigan. Jenny Fascist, no; she became a peer before they slung the anti-semitic bitch out of the party altogether. There’s Jane, er, whassername and another bloke with a beard. Unless he shaved. And Michael Nebach. I think.

Anyway, Tim Farron. Great choice. He’s loud and northern, left wing (though as the libs are further left than labour these days, that barely earns a comment) and he’s an ‘evangelical Christian’. And they are a really annoying bunch. I don’t mind Christians as a rule, they kind’a do their thing, pray a bit, go to church, shake hands a lot and go home. But evangelical means that they bang on about it all the time. They evangelise. Try to get everyone else on board with them and Jesus.

If old Timbo wants to stand outside Waitrose with a “JESUS IS MY DUDE” sandwich board, that’s fine by me.

But he brings his baggage with him. Within 24 hours of his election he was asked, as a vocal opponent against gay marriage, if he thought homosexuality a sin. He hedged. We’re all sinners, he dodged. Wouldn’t be drawn into a debate he could only lose.

So how could he ever stand to run a country when he disagrees with most of the laws? Ok, with one of the laws. And don’t mention Sunday trading.

The Sun published pictures of 9 year old Princess Elizabeth making a nazi salute with her mother in 1933. Oh. My. Gooooooooood!!!!!!

Then you have to think: this is the Sun. They don’t use the word ‘context’ in such a rag. They just create their own for maximum sensationalism.

Firstly, the (future and current) Queens might have just been larking around, making fun of Herr Hitler’s followers in Die Fatherland. But secondly, and much more importantly; it was 1933. The very start of the Nazi party. They were fairly obnoxious, but there was no indication of the horrors to come over the following 6 year advance to power and another 6 of the war. The Nazis were fairly benign nationalist lederhosen sponsors. You can’t interpret the gesture using values that weren’t to exist for another 3/4 years. Well you can, but you’d be a misguided tosser. Or the Sun. Same difference.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I wish I understood where ‘anti-austerity’ comes from. I really do. In my over-simplified, semi-random, firing-on-three-cylinder mind there’s a deep-seated understanding that if you borrow money you pay it back. Unless you can get out of it, obviously. But pay it back you must. Otherwise you’ll get arrested/jailed/beaten up/have fingers removed with wire-cutters. Metaphorically if not literally. I hope.

So nations are the same. Yet Greece’s ‘anti-austerity’ campaign was just that; we’ve borrowed money but we’re not prepared to take the measures that may enable us to pay it back. Or in there case, not ‘pay it back’ so much as fund the massive interest payments. Because ‘austerity’ means a cut in spending, a cut in lifestyle, a change of the old ways. Which were obviously excessive or they wouldn’t need austerity now. Pay-back is a bitch.

Here too we talk austerity. Non-stop, in fact. And yet Jeremy Corbyn, horrible, bearded labour party leadership candidate, is standing on an anti-austerity message. Because he’s a ‘hard left winger’, even though he looks like a soft geography teacher. And he is growing in strength. Which speaks volumes about his opposition for the leadership role.

So now Unite, the vile trade union who love to fuck up our tube network on a regular basis, are backing Corbyn. And encouraging (forcing) their massive membership, who all get their say, to back him too. Because they love spending public money on themselves and go on strike when it doesn’t happen.

Jeremy Corbyn is a horrible throw-back. He’s a socialist/communist who is anti-defence, anti-war, pretty much anti-everything most countries need. He sympathises with terrorists because he’s always looking for justification where underdogs are concerned. So rather than outright condemnation of terrible acts of violence, he’s one of ‘those’ who seek to find the ‘repression’ which may have caused people to act in such a way. In short; he’s a tosser. But socialists are all anti-austerity. Whether in Greece, France or here. Let ‘the state’ pay. WE ARE THE FUCKING STATE, YOU NONCES.

But his election to party leader, should it happen, would be the biggest bonus ever for the Conservative party. The nation (and I speak for all 60 million here) didn’t want Miliband and his Socialism-Nouveau brand of working-family, bacon-sarny clap-trap. And they (we) sure-as-shit ain’t gonna vote for no creepy commie bearded bore either.

So let’s hope Jeremy, and his anti-austerity message, wins outright. Good luck to him.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

President Obama wants to ‘leave a legacy’. They all do. Presidents, that is. They want to be remembered. They want history to label them as ‘the person who inspired this’, or ‘the man who did that’. Its a high-level vanity thing. You’ve got the most powerful job in the world, how can you manipulate things to show how great you really were, in a memorable kind’a way.

Well nuclear bombs are memorable. Unless you’re caught up in one, then less so. And Barak has left possibly the worst kind of legacy imaginable. He has armed Iran in a nuclear way. Even though all the ts & cs of the agreement seem to preclude such an eventuality. But that is all about trust. Yeah, we’ll ‘trust’ Iran not to superheat its Uranium to weapons grade, we’ll trust that they have only good intentions for their total fucking obsession with nuclear ‘power’. The most transparently obvious charade in modern history. Why would Iran want nuclear power? They pump out twenty zillion barrels of oil every single fucking day. Do you imagine they want to go nuclear ‘for the planet’? On ecological grounds? Have you seen the President of Iran? Does he look like an ecologist to you??? (For the record: ecologists are meek, mild, cardigan wearers who have small beards, glasses and smoke pipes. Most are sterile and they all vote ‘green’. Ayatollahs are different. They don’t vote at all. Its a job for life.)

Ok, we’ll trust them not to make weapons, because they’ve promised (‘fingers crossed’ if you ask me). So we’ll resume trade and other relations with them, and free up their 150 billion dollars, currently frozen in overseas accounts. That’s our side of the bargain.

So not only we give the most insanely unstable nation in the world the green light to play with nuclear fission, we also release sufficient funds for them to finance their dastardly plans and with the change they can fund all the Shia terror groups in the world. Which they already do, even on their current limited means.

How can you trust Iran?

When al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, was released from prison (which should never have happened) on compassionate grounds (he murders 270 innocent people and we feel the need to show him comassion. Go fucking figure) to go and die in his homeland, he was greeted at his plane in Tehran by thousands of cheering hero-worshippers adoring him for that bombing.

That’s the mind-set of the average, man-on-the-street Iranian, never mind those with real agendas much higher up the food chain.

Barak’s legacy. See the picture above.

Happy Doomsday

A xxxx

They’ve sent a probe to Pluto. I hope that makes you happy. The last planet (?) of our solar system is about to be revealed, in all its distant glory.

They’ve argued for years whether Pluto should be admitted to that rather exclusive club, the ‘planets of our solar system’ because its not really that big and its so fucking far away it makes Scotland look just round the corner. Its also in an asteroid belt and was thought to be maybe just a big one o’them, rather than a proper planet. But it has moons, its 1500 miles wide and to be honest, it deserves to be a planet. On merit alone. It is so far from the Sun that it takes 248 (of our ‘Earth’) years to orbit our star. So people on Pluto never ask each other how old they are. Its always less than 1.

Yet how remarkable that we can send a vessel almost 4 billion miles away, just to ‘check out’ Pluto. Its taken 9 years to get there. The vessel, New Horizons, has never used Twitter, Instagram or even called an Uber (“your driver is just 3.6 light years away, in a blue Prius”). When it left, Google was barely functioning. Mobile phones back then claimed ‘No G’. Much as mine still does half the bleedin’ time. Manchester City were just another impoverished, lowly, useless football team 9 years ago, Bournemouth were in Division 4, Serena was winning grand slams, Greece was economically viable or rather its Euro driven excesses hadn’t been fully discovered and £49million bought you a lot more than Raheem Stirling.

The best bit is that the probe, drifting through the vacuum of space at an incredible speed (no gravity; no friction) was pointed at Saturn. Whose gravitational pull had a ‘slingshot’ effect which propelled the craft into the right direction at a faster speed, knocking 3 years off the arrival time. Unfortunately the baggage handlers on Pluto are on strike this week…

Can’t wait for the photos. I love a scientific achievement. I hate an overpriced arrogant shit-head footballer. And I’m still pondering Greece. They voted an emphatic NO!!!! to austerity. Cheered like they’d won the celebrity bake-off when they won. And now are forced to accept much more severe austerity than they originally voted to reject. And that’s in the home of democracy.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

What a final it was yesterday. Sadly the best man lost but heh, Djokovich is a pretty good ‘second best’. And can only be admired even more for playing against a seriously pro-Fed crowd.

Tickets for such matches are valuable. Rare. Sought-after. They sell on the black market for, apparently, up to £44,000. Which, considering its free on tv (if you pay your license fee or even if you don’t and watch it later on i-player) seems a bit rich. But if you are a bit rich then Wimbledon is certainly a great place to get a little poorer. And for people who simply ‘have to be there’ for big events, there’s only so many ways to get there. Ballots and draws and waiting lists and queues.

Unless you’re famous. Then you get in free. In the Royal Box, no less. So the Queen saves her 44 grand for painting up Buckingham Palace. Not that she was there. Wills & Kate have been breezing in on and off all week. Pippa virtually moves in for the fortnight and Harry nips in once or twice too. Stars of tv are so important now that if Fanny from Eastenders turns up (I’m guessing; no idea who is in Eastenders, but there should be a ‘Fanny’) they kick the Queen out to make room. Hugh Grant was there yesterday. Cumberbatch. Kate Winslett, Helena Bonham Carter, Anna Wintour, half a dozen tv bakers, a whole host of former tennis winners and players.

And Lewis Hamilton. The racing driver. The world champion. Who was so buzzed up about going he posted a photo of his tickets online in the morning.

But you didn’t see him in the box. Nor in the stands. Even crouching down by the net as a ball-boy. They didn’t let him in. Lewis sadly didn’t read the bit on his tickets stating about ‘lounge suits AND TIES’, so turned up dead slick and cool but sans jacket and tie. Oh my. The world would end. Britain would crumble. Heaven would evaporate. A quick row with the steward (probably along the lines: “do you know who I am????”, “yes, Sir, but you ain’t wearin’ a tie so you can’t come in”), and off trots Lewis, refusing the offer of a borrowed kneck-tie, to watch the match on his SatNav on the way home. He’s a great driver, he can do that.

I’m the most pro-casual, anti-dress-code person in the world. I wanted to wear shorts and a Spurs shirt for my own wedding (vetoed, obviously). But if I went to the Royal Box at Wimbledon I’d wear a sodding tie (the most hateful implement of torture ever invented). Because you have to. I wore one at Lords (I had to borrow it from the son-in-law) and I’d wear one there. Its the rules. And I hate rules too, but sometimes, Lewis…

Happy Monday

A xxxx

I’m gonna say it: Serena Williams is a beast. And I mean that in the nicest possible way, to refer only to her prowess on the court. She is fucking awesome. Verging on very, very scary, but if you can still scare opponents shitless when you’re 33 and they’re much younger, fitter, more athletic and lacking the inevitable history of injuries, then you’re a beast. Young Gabi (I just won’t bother with her proper name because even if I manage to spell it correctly, its meaningless, mispronounced nonsense syllables) was truly brilliant, as was the match. But Serena knows how to win matches. Eventually. I’m happy for her. She’s done a lot for ‘old people’.

Roger Federer is also old (in relative terms). Though never a beast. Roger is the un-beast. Others hit the ball harder, smash it louder, serve faster but Roger has something extra that no others possess. He has finesse, he has grace, he has unbelievable style. And he doesn’t sweat. How that is possible I know not. But its true. I think it safe to say that I sweat more just walking to my courts in the middle of January than Fed does playing 5 sets in 40 degrees in Melbourne. And as I too play with style (of a one-legged ski-jumper), with grace (of an elephant) and with consummate elegance (Keystone Cops springs to mind), I think I’m qualified to comment.

Djokovich is a wonderful, fantastic tennis player who surprised the world when interviewed a few years back by actually seeming quite nice. In stark contrast to his perceived persona. But Roger is beyond mere ‘nice’; he’s wonderful.

The first Ashes test finishes with an England victory. Four days was all it took to put all that brash arrogance in its place. Ok, I’m not the biggest cricket fan in the world but I just like beating the Aussies at anything, any time, anywhere.

But help is at hand. Not for the Aussies, I hope, but for mankind. The new football season is just a few short weeks away. And its all happening behind the scenes.

Spurs are sharing their new ground with the NFL, even having a retractable pitch so the Yanks can play on the artificial surface that lives underneath the proper one, thus can play without ruining our grass.

Chelsea too are rebuilding (though not as big as ours; nneeuur nneeur ne-nneeur-nneeur) and want to hire Wembley for the transition times. Not content with Milton Keynes, like Spurs may have to be. (Milton fucking Keynes? Gimme a break.)

And Bastien Schweinsteiger is moving to Manchester United. The bastard love-child of Eva Braun and Franz Beckenbaur is to grace Old Trafford next season. I hope he’s happy there. I hope he’s happier there than Di Maria, than Falcao, and all the others duffers who’ve worked almost as well as Spurs recent acquisitions.

Happy Sunday

COME ON ROGER

A xxxx

When Dylann Roof shot up a predominantly black church in South Carolina, he probably never realised the full political impact of his actions. Looking at pictures of him, its doubtful he could button his own fly, let alone consider far-reaching consequences of deep cultural impact.

But he shot a bunch of lovely (by even his own admission) church-going people, because he was an ignorant moron and the son of several generations of ignorant, white supremacist (if only Americans did irony, they’d look at Dylann’s picture, along with ‘supreme’ anything, and finally understand the concept) morons before him. And in his Facebook photos he was always shown holding a Confederate flag. Because that flat symbolises so many things.

First and foremost, it IS the Southern States. No-one in Boston ever flew that flag. But like all symbols it then acquires baggage. And ‘the South’ bit implies cowboy boots and hats, it implies Country music, it implies beer and bourbon (never Scotch), it implies Ford and Chevy pickups, never Toyota or Land Rover, and it implies a good-ole-boy, shit-kickin’, baccy-chewin, rip-roarin’… White men.

I think it safe to say that no black family has ever flown a confederate flag anywhere. Because the original reason for forming the Confederate States was to fight the Union over slavery. The Northerners wanted it abolished whilst the Southerners liked it just the way it was, thought it was just faaaaarn and dandy.

And whatever protestations people make about how the flag is just about southern-ness and apple pie, it is first and foremost the sign of not just some benign form of quiet racism, but an out-there statement of supremacy, subjugation and domination. That was where it began, you cannot divest it of its origins just by flying it over a hot dog stand.

The car above is the General Lee. If you weren’t a Dukes of Hazzard fan. And I hope you weren’t because it was a tragically awful series. And the car was the star. As it should be, the acting was pretty much non-existent and the plots pathetic. Whereas this Dodge Charger R/T was a truly amazing machine.

The first one they used (there were loads, obviously, cos cars don’t last if you jump them across rivers and crash them into buildings) was bought for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And after the church shooting, the owner made the decision to take the confederate flag off the roof. Me, I’d have painted it all black anyway, but what do I know?

Then on Friday, South Carolina, the first state to remove itself from the Union before the Civil war, for the first time since then, removed the Confederate flag from its municipal buildings. Its taken them 150 years and a bunch of dead people to realise that the flag of Pro-slavery was somehow racist and nasty, even offensive to black people.

They’re replacing it with a swastika…

Only joking. Good for them. Now they just have to convince the ‘good people’ of South Carolina that its a good thing to do. They don’t seem convinced. Especially the ones in white robes with pointed hats.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Dawn was yet to break as we left the castle and entered the early-morn in the glistening, dewy forest and headed south.